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Features
In-house counsel and executives within the railroad, logistics, and transportation industries need to be aware of an increasing likelihood of litigation-related to global warming. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2007 decision in <i>Massachusetts v. EPA</i>, suits have been filed seeking to impose liability on companies whose activities emit carbon dioxide. As additional suits arise, they will doubtless reach companies in the oil, electric power, auto, and railroad sectors. These developments raise an important question: Are companies in transportation-related fields adequately prepared for the acceleration of climate change-based tort cases that their industry will likely encounter in the near future?
Features
This is the second installment of a two-part series on the proposed move from a patent system granting priority of patent rights based upon invention dates to a system in which priority is based primarily upon filing dates. The first installment discussed the history behind the current first-to-invent system and the basics of the proposed changes to the system. This installment explores the statutory bars under the proposed legislation and other changes affecting prior art.
Features
In a recent case, a patent owner claimed to have invented side impact airbag sensing. The patent enabled an embodiment; that was stipulated. In opposition to a motion for summary judgment of invalidity for lack of enablement, the owner asserted that enablement of a preferred embodiment satisfied the enablement requirement of the patent law. It didn't. The case is only one of several consistent cases. You should beware, and consider the matter in both patent prosecution and litigation. If you own a patent, and wish for a broad construction, be careful what you wish for.
Features
Brian Short, a real estate finance attorney, has joined Texas law firm Winstead PC as a shareholder. He will be located in the firm's Dallas office, working with the Real Estate Structured Finance Practice Group in the Business & Transactions Department. Short returns to Winstead after a short tenure at Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP, where he was a partner in the firm's capital financial markets, commercial lending and real estate development and finance groups.…
Features
During lease negotiations with an anchor or other national tenant, it is customary for the tenant to slap on a laundry list of prohibited or 'noxious' uses and to require the landlord to subject the shopping center to the restrictions contained therein. However, before the landlord concedes several other historically noxious uses, the owner of a modern-day lifestyle center or mixed-use center, particularly one still under development, should look carefully at these standard restrictions and consider softening the restrictions to allow certain types of uses which are finding their way into upscale and first-class shopping centers.
Features
The purpose of a 'cure period' provision is to allow the tenant an opportunity to cure a default under the lease before further action can be taken unilaterally by the landlord. However, what happens if the landlord attempts to terminate the lease before the tenant has cured the default and before the end of the cure period? Is this early notification invalid or does it become effective immediately upon the expiration of the cure period without cure?
Features
This edition of the Quarterly State Compliance Review looks at some legislation of interest to corporate lawyers that went into effect during the last three months. It also looks at some recent decisions of interest, including two decisions from the Delaware Supreme Court involving challenged stock options.
Features
In two recent decisions, the Delaware Court of Chancery found advance notice bylaws to be ineffective in preventing stockholders from nominating alternative director candidates without providing the requisite advance notice, indicating that any ambiguities in these bylaws will be construed against the corporation and in favor of activist stockholders.
Features
In February 2007 the Illinois Supreme Court in a unanimous decision held as a matter of first impression that a parent corporation could be directly liable for its negligence to the estates of two employees of its subsidiary corporation. <i>Forsythe v. Clark USA.</i> The Illinois Court relied extensively on the unanimous 1998 opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in <i>U S v. Bestfoods.</i> Both courts limited the reach of their opinions by making explicit the common law principle that corporate shareholders are not generally liable for the acts and omissions of their subsidiaries in the absence of active involvement of the parent in those acts or omissions.